bing

Bing's share of online searches stays steady

Microsoft's Bing is hanging onto its 14.4 percent of the search engine market, according to new data out yesterday from ComScore.

Looking at ComScore's U.S. search engine rankings for July, Bing stayed flat, Google lost just 0.4 of a percentage point, and Yahoo climbed slightly by 0.2 points. Overall, Google still led the way with an overwhelming 65.1 percent market share, leaving Yahoo in second place with 16.1 percent.

Drilling down to the actual number of searches conducted in the U.S. last month, Google took home 11.2 billion in total, … Read more

Should Microsoft unload Bing?

Microsoft should consider selling Bing, says a Reuters opinion piece that's gained attention in the last day or so, after being published last Friday.

Though the search engine has grown in market share and popularity since its debut in 2009, it's still a money-losing proposition and a distraction for its parent, claims Reuters columnist Robert Cyran. Despite the flush of cash that Microsoft has poured into Bing, the search's engine's online services division lost $2.6 billion in the company's latest fiscal year, he says.

Microsoft believes Bing provides a boost to some of its … Read more

Study: Facebook at bottom on customer satisfaction

Facebook may be one of the most popular Web sites around, but it doesn't seem to be one of the most loved.

The social network scored dead last in a new study out today that tracked customer satisfaction among a variety of Web sites and companies. Produced in partnership with analytics firm ForeSee Results, the 2011 American Customer Satisfaction Index E-Business Report analyzed how users feel about news sites, search engines, and social networks.

Although Facebook's reputation actually grew 3 percent from last year to reach 66 out of 100, the site was at the bottom of the … Read more

Twitter tries to come to terms with Microsoft's Bing

After failing to strike an agreement to re-up its "fire hose" data stream licensing deal with Google, Twitter is now trying to make sure the same thing doesn't happen to a similar arrangement with Microsoft's Bing search service, said sources close to the situation.

The outcome could mean a lot to both Twitter and Bing. Without a deal, the San Francisco microblogging service would be without two major paid distribution outlets for its full live stream of user tweets, a significant source of its revenue to date.

Meanwhile, Microsoft's Bing--which is waging an expensive battle … Read more

Microsoft skips Apple's copy, paste with Bing 'Lasso'

Microsoft is rolling out a new version of its native Bing application for Apple's iPad today that, with a new user gesture, aims to ditch the need to use Apple's built-in copy-and-paste feature.

Dubbed "Lasso," the gesture has users drawing their finger around any word or words on a Web page to start a new search from that selection. That's versus selecting those same words with a tap, drag, and button press using iOS' built-in copy-and-paste tool, or manually typing them into the search box.

In a blog post announcing the new feature, Bing group program manager Tony Chor says that "many searches" begin from pages users are on while browsing the Web, and that this feature eases that behavior from within the Bing iPad application. The data behind that claim is that users can save up to nine steps with Lasso compared with having to use Apple's copy-and-paste method, Chor said. … Read more

New Microsoft Web app showcases vivid aerial pics

Highlighting efforts to one day provide high-resolution aerial mapping of the world, Microsoft just launched a new Web application that showcases vivid photography of 153 spots around the country.

The detailed bird's-eye views, which Microsoft is calling Bing Maps GeoArt, are part of the company's Bing Maps Global Ortho project, a project to create a high-resolution, seamless mapping mosaic of the continental United States and Western Europe. To achieve the goal, Microsoft is spending north of $100 million, contracting with pilots to fly planes equipped with specially designed $1 million cameras that snap shots every few seconds to … Read more

The 404 845: Where we're allergic to oxymorons (podcast)

Today's "Not cool, man" segment once again goes to The Huffington Post, this time for rehashing the "Wet Hot American Summer" prequel/sequel rumors that first appeared on the Internet years ago. In other recurring segment news, we enjoyed testing Wilson's music knowledge so much yesterday that we're making it a daily thing, and a listener created a legit name for it too, so stick around for the second half to see if Wilson gets full credit.

We're also chatting today about Microsoft's new Decide.com tech forecasting site, how to DJ using just a Microsoft Kinect and a couple software programs, and an Apple patent that might spell the end of multitouch smartphones in the United States.

The 404 Digest for Episode 845

HuffPo teases 'Wet Hot' sequel/preview. Decide.com forecasts price drops and tells you when to buy technology. What's cooler than an iPad DJ? A Kinect DJ. Apple patent might mean the end of multitouch smartphones in the U.S.

Episode 845 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Bing grabs market share from Google over past year

Though Google remains firmly on top of the search engine market, it's shed market share to Microsoft over the past year, according to data released last week by research firm Compete.

Looking at the overall search engine market from May 2010 to May 2011, Compete found that Google has lost close to 16 percent of its share, dropping to 63.6 percent from 73.9 percent. At the same time, Microsoft grew its share by 75 percent, jumping to 17 percent from 9.7 percent.

The other three search engines tracked--Yahoo, Ask, and AOL--grew only slighty over the past … Read more

Bing's iPhone app now can find other iPhone apps

Bing's iPhone app now shows links to other iPhone apps as part of search results, enabling users to run or download those apps directly on their phone.

Described in a blog posted yesterday, Microsoft's goal behind the new feature is to make it easier for users to find iPhone apps directly through the mobile search engine. Though you can of course search Apple's App Store, scouring through the variety of apps that appear to find the right one can sometimes be a challenge.

Further, by using Bing to track down iPhone apps, Microsoft hopes that people running their usual searches will stumble upon apps that they never knew existed but will find useful.

The new feature works in a couple of different ways.

Using a new auto app discovery mode, Bing can find apps in the course of regular search queries. For example, searching for a general topic, such as "hotels" or "movies" will uncover iPhone apps devoted to those subjects. In a search for hotels, Bing might point you to Travelocity's mobile app, while a search for movies would uncover the iPhone apps for Hulu, IMDb, and Moviefone, among others.… Read more